Television
Television broadcasts were watched by 80 percent of the population – daily or almost daily or 83 percent “watched yesterday”. Interestingly, Slovak citizens did watch more programmes in their non-mother tongue than in other EU countries (SK 63 percent, EU28 38 percent).
The majority of viewers was receiving TV signals either via satellite (48 percent) or cable networks (25 percent). Some 14 percent of viewers were using IPTV and 12 percent were using DVB-T. TV Markíza and her network programmes Dajto and Doma stopped broadcasting in DVB-T in January 2017. This may mean that a costly switchover from analogue to digital DVB-T broadcasting may end in a failure – instead of delivering on its promise of offering new services and higher quality of broadcast, it will remain a rather costly terrestrial broadcasting for a tiny part of population.
The public service television broadcast has two units. The first, called Jednotka, is a general information, education, and entertainment/sports channel. The second television unit, Dvojka, is focusing on more educated viewers and specific groups of viewers such as ethnic and religious minorities, and socio-professional groups such as soldiers or fishermen.
Markíza Group operates TV Markíza, Doma (since 2009, mostly re-broadcasted own and other production)) and Dajto (since 2012, mostly re-broadcasted own and other production). It also operates portal Tvnoviny.sk. There are some other minor TV channels that belong to what is called JOJ Group or JOJ Media House respectively: TV JOJ, PLUS (mostly re-broadcasted own and other production), Wau (younger female audience, mostly re-broadcasted own and other production), Rik TV (paid channel for children aged 4 to12 years) and JOJ cinema (movie channel for viewers in the Czech Republic and Slovakia). TV channel Ťuki TV for younger children is broadcasted exclusively for Slovak Telekom, a.s. Moreover, JOJ Media House owns Harad company which through another company provides complex services to some private radio broadcasters. JOJ Group or JOJ Media House claim to be the most active in the fusion of online and social media with traditional television broadcasting (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, web Huste.sk, Joj.sk and Noviny.sk and online TV archive). JOJ Media House has some investments in the Czech Republic, Croatia and Austria.
In both cases, “sister” channels are specialised in particular groups of viewers, with mostly re-broadcasted programmes from original TV as well as older foreign programmes.
The news television TA3 is also owned by a Slovak owner, Grafobal Company. This company is involved primarily in the production of print and packaging materials. However, its owner is active in many other business activities. TA3 is the first and only cable and satellite news television in Slovakia. It started broadcasting in September 2001. The data on market share can be interpreted in a way that the most popular TV station is the first nationwide, commercial broadcaster TV Markíza. This market leader is followed by TV JOJ, which emerged from a network of regional stations with a dominant ‘founder’ in the East Slovak city of Košice. TV JOJ is more commercially orientated in its content, especially in its news. The first public television channel Jednotka is at third place. Recently, its popularity shows some signs of revival, especially in the main news broadcast. It is important to note the rather high share of other television channels watched in Slovakia with 35 percent share. This is related mainly to foreign television broadcasts watched in Slovakia (especially and traditionally the Czech, Hungarian and some German language television channels, but increasingly other foreign language channels among younger generations).
The general trend in trust was clearly visible until the end of 2015. Until then, the most trusted was TV Markíza, and although news of TV JOJ kept its level of trust, nevertheless, the trust in news by TV JOJ was outperformed step by step by PSM RTVS. The data for 2016 suggest that trust in news of TV Markíza was put on (almost) equal level with trust in news of RTVS. At the same time, news TV TA3 managed to improve its rating (related to trust) significantly in 2016 too.